Kazem Alemzadeh’s research interests are in bionics and bioengineering in dental and health care, the emphasis is on creating masticatory apparatus with in an artificial oral environment that is of interest to number of industries but has got to be realised. These industries are: i) the pharmaceutical industry for drug release; ii) dental science where the focus is on material testing and failure points; and, iii) food science where the focus is bolus breakdown and flavour release.
Drug release application – Proof of concept for a humanoid chewing robot with built-in artificial oral environment has been pioneered in collaboration with the Clinical Trials Unit at Bristol Dental School. This innovative technology based on bionics, biomedical engineering and clinical medicine, addresses a significant barrier in the commercial development of MCG. The vision is to create this enabling technology to test tailored drug delivery to patients in a controlled, safe and user-friendly manner, that would also reduce the costs of new drug development. This advancement in drug delivery technology has the potential to improve patient care and outcomes.
Dental science application – (2004 – 2010), collaborating with the Bristol Dental School, working on the development of robotic dental testing simulator, which has resulted in several publications, a patent and Royal Society Summer Exhibition in 2009. One of the scientific papers helped to win the first prize (€5,000) for innovative development of dental materials testing machine and receiving the Paul Roell Medal as a recognition in the prestigious 2010 ZwickRoell Science Awards.
Fengyuan Liu’s research interests focus on applying Additive Manufacturing (AM) in biomedical applications, encompassing three key areas:
- Designing and fabricating biomanufacturing systems.
- Utilizing scaffold-based biofabrication strategies for bone tissue regeneration
- Applying 4D printing to develop smart materials for regenerating heart stents.
Plasma-assisted Bioextrusion System (PABS): The project is about the development of a novel hybrid (multi-printing and multi-plasma) system for biomanufacturing allowing the fabrication of single, multi-material and functionally-graded scaffolds with or without cells. It included hardware design and development and software user interface design and control. The system was validated through the fabrication of a wide range of scaffolds characterised from a morphological, chemical, physical and biological points of view.
Bone Bricks: Cost effective modular osseointegrated prosthetics for large bone loss
The development and implementation of a patient specific prosthetic to fill the bone loss due to injury, using biodegradable and biocompatible modular pieces (bone bricks), from a pallet of shapes and sizes that fit together in a “lego like” way to form the prosthesis. The printed bone bricks (top) and the imaging of cell growth on the bone bricks (bottom) are shown right.
Several ongoing PhD programmes:
Rixiang Quan, “Machine learning-assisted Bioprinting Platform for Bone Scaffolds Fabrication”, PhD in Mechanical Engineering, 2021-2025, in process;
Weiting Xu, “Machine learning-assisted Metal 3D printing system for Bone Plates”, PhD in Mechanical Engineering, 2022-2026, in process, funded by CSC-Bristol Scholarship
Yi Huang, “4D Printing the Bioabsorbable Heart Stents with Comparable Mechanical Properties”, PhD in Bioengi-neering, 2023-2027, in process) funded by CSC-Bristol Scholarship.
Maria Valero research interests focus on the development of novel, integrative solutions combining high-performance sensing (e.g., electrical imaging) & systems and digital technologies like IoT and Digital Twins for medical and health-related applications.
Her past work includes developments both at hardware and computational level, namely with the development of wearable sensor devices for prosthetic applications and the creation of neuromorphic models for tactile feedback applications, among others.
Dr Valero latest research expanded to other bio/medical-related areas. Namely, with a major, direct impact on human health and well-being, food plays a pivotal role in medical applications. Dr Valero latest research investigates new frameworks for integration of sensor devices, IoT, Big Data and Digital Twins for safer -and healthier- food.
Dr Valero research interests include wearable/autonomous devices and digital twinning for:
- Food and nutrition;
- Fitness and wellness;
- Telemedicine and remote patient monitoring/rehabilitation;
- Neuromorphic systems and applications.
Multi-axial mechano-transduction model’s response to example, typical stress stimuli used to evaluate the response of biological afferents. Source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7989874
Conceptual framework of Digital Twin applied to a circular food supply chain.